Experiments in writing my own reality

Fake it Away – Insecure Writer’s Support Group March

Insecure Writer’s Support Group is hosted by Alex J. Cavanaugh. To find out more and sign up visit the link.

This month I have also been organised enough to answer the optional question. Virtual cookies for everyone.

Have you ever pulled out a really old story and reworked it?

The first story I had published (and I mean, like totally grown up published with actual payment and a contract, and everything) was a reworking of something I wrote in my teens.

I was so excited. I jumped. I squealed. I told everyone, and everyone was suitably impressed. They all wanted copies of the anthology my story would be in. They all expected me to be the one buying said copies.

This led to the second lesson I learned (the first being just send the damn story off already because what have you really got to lose?)

Second lesson. It’s great that family and friends want to support me, but next time I will give them a website link and get them to buy their own.

It gets ridiculous very quickly. Add to this guilt that grandparents, work colleagues, boyf’s family etc. would not normally have an iota of interest in vampire slash/YA romance/fairy-tale mash ups/barely concealed feminist re-workings of the top ten moments in history that make me angry (pick your poison) so I felt bad about asking for the money I’d spent back.

Not a sensible way to make a profit. Less sensible to put my boyfriend’s dad in the position of being that far inside my head. ‘I liked your story,’ he said sympathetically, ‘but what did it actually mean?’

I do not regret supporting the publication that gave me a chance, but next time I will be so much cooler and controlled about the whole thing. Self-help gurus are always saying fake it until you make it, and I have solemnly sworn to fake it like a demon.

On the outside anyway. On the inside I will always be the girl jumping up and down and squealing.